


In Which They Survived a Space Teletubby

by QueenMae_theGay



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:56:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenMae_theGay/pseuds/QueenMae_theGay
Summary: Setting: Space; post Garfle Warfle SnikTime: Season SevenKeith and Lance talk about the events of the day





	In Which They Survived a Space Teletubby

It was late, or as late as it could be in their pretend cycle or day and night. Time is different in deep space. More fluid. 

Keith shook his head as if he was trying to clear the weirdness from his brain. It had been a very very very long day. He pulled his hair up into a messy bun - something he’d never do while the rest of the crew were awake. Lance would never let him hear the end of it. 

It was Keith’s shift to stay awake and keep watch for another three varga at least. Although Shiro was on the next watch and he definitely needed the sleep more than Keith. It wasn’t hard to ‘lose track’ of what time his shift was supposed to end. It’s not like he could sleep anyway. 

He reached for the paper journal that Allura had found god-knows-where for him. He’d always liked to record his thoughts on paper, and when the journal he’d brought from Earth had run out, the mice had just appeared with one the next day. He smiled at the thought. 

As he worked through the events of the day, he found himself continuing to smile. 

 

“.... So he’s kinda like the future.” I don’t understand why Lance wouldn’t choose himself? He’s smart and selfless and determined, and he definitely could bring people together better than me. He can talk to people effortlessly, whereas I try to solve things by stabbing them a few times. I just 

His pen rolled out of his grip, and Keith realized he’d been daydreaming for several minutes, just staring off into space. LIterally. He crawled under the control panel to find his pen. Another gift from Allura. 

When he climbed back up again, strands of his bun falling loose, he noticed a small comm link beeping. A request for a private chat. 

“Lance?”

***

Time was so weird this deep in space, but Lance didn’t really care. He wasn’t technically supposed to be on watch, but he couldn’t sleep. 

He was angrier than he knew he had a right to be. Keith had chosen him of all people to escape, and then blamed it on him not wanting to spend eternity with him???

After Lance had said all those nice things, too. 

It was almost like the universe was trying to make fun of him. 

So he’d been playing around with the updates Pidge had made to his software. 

After they left Earth, Pidge had wandered into his room one night, crying. It was after her fight with Keith - after she tried to run away. But Lance hadn’t thought about that until later. His uncle instincts had kicked in and he had pulled her in for a long hug. They didn’t really talk much that night, just lay side by side. 

It helped them both to not be alone. But in the nights following, when one or the other or both had had a nightmare, they would talk. 

Pidge would talk about how insignificant she felt next to her brother. 

Lance would tell her how much he missed his family. 

One night, Pidge had asked him why he photographed almost everything they saw in their journeys. 

“So I can draw it when I get home.”  
And he hadn’t meant to, but he cried just the tiniest bit because as much as he missed his family, he missed his art more than anything. 

The next day, Pidge had handed him a tiny chip. When he put it on the dashboard of his lion absentmindedly, a simulation sprang up. It was an art studio, surrounding him in his cockpit. 

But it was his studio, the way he had described it to Pidge. 

As time went on, he would send her texts with tiny requests. Add an option for charcoal. 

A 10” box fan on the ground by the door. 

If I draw pictures, can you render them as photographs?

As time went on, Pidge would add features. Sensory output in his gloves made it feel like he was really touching the art supplies. His speaker system appeared out of nowhere one day, while he was in the simulation. Mid-song. He’d jumped about ten feet.  
He suddenly gained the ability to move things around in the space, reorganizing as he saw fit. 

He spent all his non-training time in the cockpit. 

When he switched to piloting Red, he had asked Allura to get the chip off of Blue’s dashboard. He told her that it had some Earth music on it from Pidge. 

When he plugged it into Red, the only change was a tiny polaroid photo, hanging among his sketches. A rendering of the whole team together. 

Lance had smiled then, but he scowled now as he dug through boxes. He didn’t want to paint nicely today. He wanted to be messy. 

He found India Ink and brushes, mixing and splattering and brushing together scenes and portraits. He painted for hours, keeping the visual of the empty space around him open in his peripheral vision. He stopped and dropped his brush, and the sound of it clattering on the floor brought his attention back to his piece. 

While he had been mentally fuming about Keith’s self-sacrificing choice, he had been drawing the same boy. But the Keith he drew was slung in a chair, his legs up on a table. The Keith he drew had one hand in his hair, his stupid gloves on. The Keith he drew had his hair pulled up in a messy top knot, strands of black ink floating down around his face. The Keith he drew was smiling, relaxed, happy. 

All the things Lance had never seen Keith, had never had a chance to see Keith. 

He scowled again - and then smiled at the gentle boy he had conjured. 

“Red? Open up a private chat with Keith.”

***

“Lance?”

He couldn’t breathe. Lance wasn’t supposed to be up right now, let alone calling him. Privately. Looking like he was about to… cry?

“Hey, Keith. Can I ask you a question?”

“Are you ok?”

He couldn’t breathe. Keith shouldn’t have answered him, because Lance had thought it wasn’t his shift yet. And to make matters worse, his hair was tied up in a sloppy bun. And he looked so… worried?

“I uhh… Mullet, why did you choose me?”

“What?”

“Today. You chose me to escape. Why?”

Oh. Oh shit. Keith couldn’t answer that, not without ruining something; not without wanting Lance in a way he couldn’t have him. 

He hesitated a moment too long. 

“Nevermind.”

“Lance. Wait.”

“No, I get it. You really just don’t want to spend eternity with me.”

There was only one thought left in Keith's head: 'That’s exactly what I want.'

“Lance…”

“Goodnight, Keith.”

And he hung up like it was the easiest decision in the world. 

 

But Lance underestimated how impulsive Keith can actually be when he hasn’t slept enough, and he’s worried sick, and when he’s maybe just a little bit in love. 

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, for Lance, Keith was all three. 

***

Keith left the wolf in charge and jetpacked across the empty space between his lion and the red one. 

The closest one, even though they weren’t flying in formation. It just felt natural, for both of them, to fly near each other. 

Lance had never been walked in on while in his studio. It had been close a few times, but Blue had always locked up. 

And Red wouldn’t trust anyone but her Paladin. Paladins. 

So naturally, when Keith projected just the tiniest bit of his longing down the empty channel that had once been their bond, her jaws slid open. 

***

The portrait of Keith was hanging from one wall, backlit by the golden-hour glow of a simulated Cuban summer night. Soft music played from the speaker, but Lance wasn’t listening. He was stretched out in his chair, his console having become his workstation. 

Shelves lined the empty wall of his Lion, and he reached for a charcoal pencil, his hand knowing where to find the glass jar without him having to turn his head. 

He was humming softly to himself, his left-hand fingers tapping along to the music. In perfect time, Keith realized. 

He itched to lean over Lance’s shoulder and loop that too-long strand of hair behind his ear, but he didn’t.

He stayed silent, watching Lance interact with this projected world. 

Lance stopped tapping, letting his gaze wander over the paintings still ‘drying’ on the walls. Although the inks wouldn’t smear unless he interacted with the files, he still thought of them as drying. Old habits die hard. 

He drifted over some landscapes and self-assigned still lives, across some impressionistic and cubistic takes, and landed on the piece ‘taped’ up directly above him. 

The soft, happy, laughing Keith. 

He let out a long sigh. And then a screech, because he turned and realized that the real Keith was standing directly behind him. 

Maybe if he hadn’t been so shocked, he would have noticed how kind and worried Keith really looked. 

“You uh... You hung up really suddenly. And I was worried? So I came over here.”

Keith rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, suddenly self-conscious. Lance didn’t want him here, and he was intruding. 

Lance was shocked, and still a little red from said shock, but he still could observe. 

“Hold still.”

“What?”

Lance was bent over, rifling through a bin of notebooks. “Don’t move!” He threw the words over his shoulder, straightening up with a sketchpad in hand. 

Keith was still standing in the doorway, one hand behind his head. “Why?”

“Because I haven’t drawn from a live model in ages and you’re here, and you clearly want to talk about something, so the least you can do is let me draw you while you talk.”

Plus you look gorgeous right now, Lance added silently. 

“Ok.”

Lance grinned, and Keith knew he had made the right decision because he would have done anything to watch that smile light up Lance’s face again. He was beautiful, Keith decided. In this moment, surrounded by simulated art supplies, he was in his element. 

Keith stood there in silence for a few minutes; Lance scribbled in silence for a few minutes. 

“Talk to me.”

“What?”

“I finished drawing you like that. Move around. Talk to me. You look so uncomfortable it’s almost funny.”

Keith just sighed. Lance pointed to the corner, where a folded chair sat. Like it had been waiting for him. 

“Sit. Talk. And take off your damn boots, you’re getting space dust on my carpet.”

Keith looked down and realized that, somehow, there were, in fact, footprints where he had stepped. And one, singular footprint where he had almost stepped towards Lance and then thought better of it. Embarrassed again, he plopped into the seat.

Only to fall right through it. 

Lance covered an indelicate snort. “It’s a simulation, dumbass. Sit here.”

 

“That’s… your seat.”

Lance stood up and walked across the small room as if he was trying to put more distance between him and Keith. He tidies a few things away, before sighing, cursing under his breath in what Keith thought was Spanish, and snapping his fingers. 

The room disappeared. 

Space was so dark sometimes. Without the warm sunlight streaming in through projected windows, the room felt colder. 

“It was your seat first.”

Keith leaned against the wall instead. 

“Lance, I didn’t vote you out because I don’t want to be around you.”

“Oh?”

“I voted you out because you’d make a better leader than I am. I voted you out because you’d be the only one who’d be able to stay happy enough to create a truly peaceful cause. Because even though you hate violence, you’d manage to kick some Galra ass. And because, of all of us, you’d work the hardest to get the rest of us out.”

“Keith I… I think that’s the most words you’ve ever said to me at one time without being sarcastic.”

“Shut up.”

“Yessir.”

“Lance I voted you out because as much as it would kill me to not see you every day, it would kill me more to know that you’re trapped in the prison of some fucked up space-Teletubby and I could have prevented it.”

Lance stood next to him and leaned into Keith’s shoulder. 

For a long time, they were quiet like that, resting against each other. Even though Keith was taller now, the gesture felt familiar, even if they had never really had much physical contact before. 

Lance was always afraid to push Keith when it came to stuff like this. As much as it bothered him, he never wanted Keith uncomfortable. But when he looked up, when he saw how soft Keith’s face was while speaking, how upset he was at the thought of Lance trapped, something melted in Lance. 

So he did the only thing that came naturally in a situation like this. 

He hugged Keith. 

“Your face is stupid.”

“Ok, Lance.”

“And I hate your mullet.”

“I know, buddy.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, just thank you.”

“Ok Lance, you’re welcome.”

“Keith, kiss me if I’m wrong but…”

Lance never did finish that sentence. Although he was being sarcastic, the tiny, tiny part of him that was sincere exploded when Keith leaned down, ever so gently, and pressed his lips to Lance’s cheek.

“You’re frequently wrong. I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.”

Lance spun around where he stood, gently placing himself so Keith was between him and the wall. 

“I’d like… to kiss you again.”

“Ok.”

Lance laughed, really just an exhalation of breath, and Keith could feel it on his own mouth. 

“Ok.”

So Lance kissed him. 

***

In the morning, when Allura woke the crew from their naps, Kosmo appeared in Hunk’s cockpit like usual. But when they did roll call, two paladins complained about the wake-up call through the same speaker. Because "Allura just ten more minutes please" although he was the "hypocrite wasn’t this whole wakeup call thing your idea?"

There really wasn’t that much privacy when you’re flying through space in a giant mechanical, semi-sentient cat robot. 

Of course, that would never deter Lance, who was willing to put aside his simulation for his love. 

And it would definitely not deter Keith, who had no hesitation about climbing back into bed with a moderately annoyed Lance after barking an order because he was going to sleep in for once I think we’ve about goddamn earned it. 

Although the amount of sleep the two of them really got is still up for debate.


End file.
